The journal Science retracted eight of Hendrik Schon's discredited research papers on Thursday, but the information still lurks on the Internet. In September, an investigative committee found that 17 papers authored by Schon, considered to be major breakthroughs in physics, were mostly fabrications. But a Web search on Schon's name turns up more pages touting those "accomplishments" than his firing in September by Bell Labs, the result of his fabricating that data.

Schon's actions not only embarrassed and angered his colleagues, but created a lot of extra work for webmasters -- although what exactly should be done with the pages is still unclear.

"There's the wired gulag approach: You never existed, you were never here, you disappeared," said Aly Colón, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. "But it's always better to provide more information than less."